Peter Whittle on CentreRight believes that we should support the protests at the Lindsay oil refinery:
"The growing protests by groups of workers over the use of foreign
labour is evidence perhaps that working people, battered into
submission for years by a contemptuous governmental, cultural and media
establishment, are finally turning. Enough, they are saying, is enough."

The Financial Times warns that Tory peers face many potential conflicts of interests

"Two-thirds of David Cameron’s front-bench team in the Lords have paid outside jobs, some of which present a potential conflict of interest with the peers’ official parliamentary roles, analysis by the FT has revealed. Labour attacked the Tories’ slew of second jobs on Friday as the escalating row over peers’ outside interests increased pressure for re form of the second chamber." – FT

Cameron calls for bankers to look after the poor

"Cameron said that the City should switch its focus from developing the complex derivative products that caused the crisis to providing help for the less well off. "Our financial system boasts people so bright they’ve created financial instruments beyond even their own understanding. Now they need to use those talents to help the poorest build assets." – Guardian

"The Conservative leader said his government would put families before profit. He declared war on firms that undermine family life by making staff work long hours and vowed to crack down on those polluting the environment." – The Sun

"Both politicians and businesses have to be utterly clear that the solution to the contraction in global growth is not protectionism or a reversal of global economic integration. This does not have to be as simple as the erection of new tariffs. The decision by globally active banks to withdraw lending from their international operations can be just as damaging to the dynamic that drives long-term global growth." – Times

Matthew Parris: The English patient may not get better

"What if, by the end of the winter of 2009-10, those green shoots fantastically conjured up by Baroness Vadera this month, really do begin to appear – but only in America? What if China and India, after catching a cold, bounce back quite fast as clients’ economies begin to recover – but not ours? What if the economic trough into which Germany, France and other Northern European economies are also slipping, proves shallower for them, and their recovery comes faster? What if by spring next year the United States is demonstrably powering the global economy out of recession – yet we British still languish? What if our near-addictive past reliance on financial services hampers the restarting of the domestic economy here, because it is the City that has taken the most direct hit?" – Matthew Parris in The Times

More than half of all hardened and violent criminals are escaping a prison term – Telegraph

Simon Heffer wonders how a young man who is illiterate could have gained seven GCSEs – Telegraph

Darling and Smith face axe after Labour does badly in European Elections – Daily Mail

Tony Blair calls for Hamas to become part of Middle East Peace Process – Times

And finally… David Cameron is interviewed by James Harrington, aged 12 – The Guardian

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